A payroll system is designed to process employee compensation and benefits for individual payroll periods. Employees may be salaried workers or contract workers. Salaried employees receive a constant amount of compensation each payroll period based on an annual salary. On the other hand, contract workers receive compensation commensurate to an hourly wage multiplied by the number of hours worked in a payroll period. Additionally, salaried and/or contract employees may earn wages based on commissions for sales, tips, or completion of projects. Whatever the compensation structure, employees receive wages at the end of specified payroll periods (e.g., weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.). Additionally, employees cannot typically view the amount of compensation earned prior to the issuance of compensation at the end of a payroll period. The issuance of compensation often takes the form of a paycheck, direct deposit, or other similar means.
Generic tools exist for estimating the amount of compensation an employee earns prior to the end of a payroll period. For example, web-based paycheck calculators estimate the amount of wages earned over a specific period, based on an hourly pay rate manually entered by the user. These web-based tools typically do not take into account other factors specific to the manner in which a particular individual is compensated.